George Fox University | Offices and Services | Institutional Technology | E-mail Policies and Procedures

E-mail Policies and Procedures

George Fox University maintains an electronic messaging system to support academic and administrative communications, and to support the social and service needs of our community. As the electronic messaging system has a finite capacity, policies have been adopted to safeguard its continued operation. Additional policies have been adopted to support the code of conduct of the University.

Non-mission uses. Messages with the primary purpose of advertising or conducting a business other than the University's are prohibited. Any other use of the electronic messaging system should be cleared with the Network Administrator before being pursued.

Student mailboxes will be limited to 10 MB in size. Students with more than 8 MB in their mailbox may be contacted by the Network Administrator. The closer students come to 10 MB certain functions will be disabled, such as sending and receiving emails.

Employee mailboxes will be limited to 50 MB in size. Employees with more than 50 MB in their mailbox may be contacted by the Network Administrator and/or their mailbox may be disabled. Employee requests for an increase in mailbox size will be approved or denied based on current policy, available resources, and university priorities and goals.

Deleted messages are disposed of each night by an automated process. These messages can be recovered before the deletion process (see the View menu to show deleted items). After the deletion process there is no practical way to recover a message.

Attachments to e-mail messages should be kept under 1MB in size. Users receiving a larger attachment are required to promptly download the attachment to their local hard drive, then delete it from their mailbox.

Sending unsolicited e-mail especially to multiple users and/or conferences (sometimes called "spam" or "junk mail") is prohibited.

Sending chain letters is prohibited. A chain letter is defined as any letter, for any purpose, that urges the receiver to forward the letter on to additional addresses. (Chain letters grow exponentially and can quickly overwhelm an electronic messaging system, shutting down mail services to the entire community.)

Sending "broadcast" messages is prohibited except as pre-authorized by IT. A broadcast message is defined as a message sent directly to a large audience (such as everyone in Sutton, all staff, or all freshmen) and is usually but not always unsolicited. IT provides two resources for such mailings: FoxMail conferences, and an e-mail listserver.

Valid return addresses are required on all messages sent by George Fox users. Failure to include a return address constitutes an anonymous message, which is prohibited. Intentionally providing a false or misleading return address is also prohibited. Providing another user's return address constitutes forgery.

E-mail "aliases" (alternative user names and/or addresses) are not provided by the system, except for legitimate University business. Directors or supervisors of departments and programs may request e-mail aliases that describe the general purpose or function of the department or program. All such requests must be made to the Service Desk and must be approved by the Director of Administrative Computing. Whenever possible, e-mail aliases and web aliases should be equivalent.

User names (and hence e-mail addresses) are created automatically by the server computer. Requests to change user names will be denied except in extreme cases or when a user's legal name changes.

All network servers, equipment, and software are University owned, including the email servers, software and associated data. The University reserves the right to access and monitor data contained in or passing through University owned equipment and software, including but not limited to personal, conference and business related email. Standard examples of such access include:

• At user request.
• At Director or higher level supervisor's request to pull University-related messages from an employee's e-mail account when the employee is unavailable.
• As needed by Network Services to maintain efficient network, server and workstation operations.
• As needed to comply with University policy.
• At the request of a University authorized official.
• As required to comply with local, state, and federal authorities.

Policy violations. If violations of University policies and/or community standards are suspected, the University reserves the right to take action. Actions may include, but are not limited to, further investigation of suspected violations, access to email and network traffic (i.e. network "sniffers"), and possible disciplinary action. If violations of policies are confirmed, disciplinary actions may include suspension of email privileges, referral to the appropriate University authorized officials and other actions as deemed necessary.

Procedures

• Network Services receives notification from the Registrar's Office (for students) or Human Resources (for employees) that a person has joined the George Fox community.
• If the account is not already set up upon arrival, the employee's supervisor should contact the Service Desk and provide the following information:
• • Last name
  • First name
  • Title
  • Extension
  • University Identification Number
• Student accounts are created based upon the "confirm" flag set by the Registrar.

• Network Services receives notification from the Registrar's Office (for students) or Human Resources (for employees) that a person has left the George Fox community. At that time, a person's email account will be deleted within 3 days.
• An employee or student that leaves the university may request their emails to be forwarded for no longer than 30 days.
• After 30 days the person will be completely removed from the system.

• Special aliases can be created for university-related departments. Such aliases must be requested by a supervisor and require the approval of Network Services.
• It is the responsibility of the department to inform the Service Desk if any changes or deletions need to be made to an alias.

In the event that Network Services needs to access a user's email box (Foxmail Desktop) a log will be kept with the following information:

• Date.
• Reason for access.
• Name of user whose mailbox is being accessed.
• Actions taken (if any) and name of person with physical copy of produced documents (if any).
• Name of Network Services employee and other, if any, authorized person who is accessing a user's mailbox.